net.dialogue.6

net.dialogue.6Digital Hallucinogens(Mark Amerika with John Vega)

"telltarget ("memoryfield") {gotoAndPlay ("disintegration");

"Digital debris. Excess cache. Spiritual bedlam.

"The glue of minds.

"Ultimate execution: triggering a digital weapon, a recordable memory device that captures your seeing for you, that tells it like it is, but with a supplemental metacommentary that is always ready to rip you, mix you, burn you into being.

"Who are the image killers?

"Who writes the Action Scripts?"

from FILMTEXT

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Mark Amerika: I just received email from Andrew Chetty, new media curator at the ICA in London, saying that our collaborative project, FILMTEXT, and the net art retrospective it is part of (HOW TO BE AN INTERNET ARTIST), will get an extended exhibition profile in the New Media Centre. The second exhibition will take place January 9-31. How do you feel about having your web work in a high-traffic art institute like the ICA?

John Vega: Having FILMTEXT in a major art venue is both an honor and also abstract. It is an honor in that digital art (and specifically Flash art) is certainly not part of the mainstream art world and having an actual on-site version of the piece is one of the real rewards of creating this piece. It is abstract in that I could consider the ICA simply another node on the network, meaning that the piece really ISN'T there physically, but simply extends to there from here. I hope that this new showing will continue the movement of digital art (net.art, Flash.art) into the museum realm so that more folks are exposed and challenged by it.

MA: Sometimes Flash art gets a bad rap in net art circles. The biggest criticism is that it all starts looking and feeling the same. Can you relate? How can artists working in Flash silence their critics?

JV: I can relate to the criticism as much Flash art has been created using only the "timeline" or "movie" capability of Flash. In other words, many commercial and fine art applications of Flash are simply attempts to create sequences which could just as easily exist in digital (e.g. QuickTime) or traditional movie forms. What is missing in much of this work is "surprising familiarity" - the use of interaction, mathematics, randomness and networking technologies that are available with Flash's underlying scripting layers that would transform these simple linear movies into four-dimensional, cyber-physical experiences where art is created anew each time the users interacts.

Flash artists can silence their critics by pursuing original ideas that step outside the traditional timeline metaphors (so prevalent in most commercial Flash work) and extend into metaphysical space where "time" is dispensed with and the need to derive ideas comes not from what has preceded (the Flash crap we see now), but from what is yet to be. For me, nearly anything I can "see" with my artist's eye can be translated into a net experience using Flash.

MA: Seeing, being seen, and being the seer: this is what FILMTEXT explores, especially in relation to digital narrative and how the story behaves (or doesn't behave, as the case may be). One thing I find most interesting about our use of action-scripting in this work is how we use the code to, in essence, bring Flash into the net art fold. Which, by the way, was not so easy for me, as I have been resisting this format for a few years now. Along these lines, how does Flash art become a kind of Internet art and what are the net art works that have recently influenced your thinking as an artist working primarily in Flash?

JV: Flash art becomes Internet art when it extends beyond a simple "player" and "movie" model, and reaches into the realm of a connected piece whereby the engine of the net helps fuel the Flash work as it breathes in datastreams, responds to user's thoughts and emotions (interaction) and generates the digital art answer.

A good example of what has influenced me lately would be the generative (and multi-user) work of Mark Napier as well as the ambient-generative work of Joshua Davis. With Davis's Praystation, we see the "player" and "movie" dissolve as the art is recursively grown, three dimensionally displayed, and distributed to the users mind via phosphor screen.

MA: Flash seems so well-suited toward narrative and gaming, both in a mainstream sense but also in an artistic way. In FILMTEXT, it was weird, because, even before the Playstation 2 commission, we were already developing our self-described "ambient game" model where progressing through different levels became the net art equivalent of navigating into higher or alternative states of consciousness; as if "playing" the game were part of a meaning-making adventure i.e. "how much meaning do I have to generate out of these filmtext scenes to make it to the next level?" This, of course, brings up the issue of how much intelligence needs to be programmed into an "ambient game" so that it can deliver conscious otherness.

JV: Yes. Because the machine (Flash) can monitor, track and evaluate the user's actions, the idea of game is fully realized with an authoring tool like Flash. With a net art application, this capability becomes transparent as the user travels through the artists' dream unknowingly diverted and persuaded to follow paths intended or not. By evaluating and acting upon the users' decisions, the game then becomes art as new idea-seeds are flung and planted into the lines of action-script blossoming into new cyber-realities which gently (or not) tweak the set and setting of the digital hallucination.

MA: Yes, that was one thing I found really fascinating about our collaboration, that is, the entire team of collaborators from Twine and Williams to you and me – it was as if we were all intuitively generating images, sounds, texts, design and action-scripts heavily geared toward the psychedelic. And yet, even as we were creating this trippy narrative-game, we were also highly conscious of the final output, the instrumental use of technology. The ESSENCE of technology (as Heidegger reads it) was, of course, explored too – this time in FILMTEXT via that long meditation on Digital Thoughtography (DT). Editing the digital images while writing those DT scenes and listening to Twine sound loops in the background made for a powerful work flow experience.

JV: Working with Twine on FILMTEXT was both a functional and revelatory experience. The sound art of Twine acted both as functional soundtrack for the piece and "sound-map" for me as the Flash artist. As with most multimedia construction, the artist (or designer) ends up listening to endless playings of the sound objects to be used in a piece. In the case of FILMTEXT and Twine, this repetitive consideration soon revealed the true nature of the piece as it eased me into cyber-meditation-space where my mind's eye opened to the world of FILMTEXT.

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Mark Amerika's first European net art retrospective, HOW TO BE AN INTERNET ARTIST, and his new work of net art, FILMTEXT (commissioned by Playstation 2), will enjoy a second exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London from January 9-31, 2002. The site is accessible now at amerika.newmediacentre.com

John Vega is a digital artist and animator living in Boulder, Colorado. His award-winning interface design work can be found at his web base ofoperations: dancingimage.com